The Islamic State (Full Length)

Irreconcilable differences: genocide in Iraq, Part 1

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, when asked in November 2008 what one word best describes Iraq, answered “fear.” Today it’s terror.

When Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, he said in his victory speech “To those who would tear the world down, we will defeat you.”

The Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), certainly qualifies as a terrorist army of extremist fanatics who want to “tear down the world” and transform it into a global Islamic state, called the caliphate, ruled by Islamic Shariah law.

The last caliphate was the Ottoman Empire until its collapse in 1918. It was abolished in 1922 and included what is today the nations of Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria,, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

In World War I (1914-1918) the Allied Powers including Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the United States defeated the Central Powers of Austria-Hungry, German and Ottoman Empires. The victorious nations split up the Ottoman Empire into a number of nations including Iraq and Syria.

States or governments kill people, especially when they go to war. About 16 million died in World War I of which an estimated 8 to nearly 11 million were military and about 2 to nearly 7 million were civilian deaths. Another 22 to 23 million were wounded military casualties.

When governments systematically kill people due to their ethnic, national, racial or religious group membership, it is called genocide, a term coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin that combines the Greek genos (“race, people”) and Latin cidere (“to kill”).

Today, according to Dr. Hisham al-Hashimi, Iraq’s leading expert on ISIS, “I would say there are now between 30,000 and 50,000 of them. Of those, I would say 30 percent are ideologues. The others have joined out of fear or coercion.” They are noted for their brutality and violence directed primarily at Iraq Shia Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities and the Iraq army, police and government dominated by Shia Muslims.

On June 29, ISIS changed its name to Islamic State and proclaimed a caliphate with its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, named caliph. The Islamic State is systematically killing those who do not share their religious Sunni Islamic faith, including Shia Iraqis, Sunni Kurds, Yasidis, Christians and those who do not speak Arabic and do not obey Sharia law.

The genocidal atrocities committed by the Islamic State are graphically displayed and documented in many videos posted on YouTube and used by the Islamic State as propaganda to terrorize all those living in Iraq as well as abroad. Iraqis fleeing their homes and communities are literally running for their lives.

The inspiration of most modern violent Islamic terrorist jihadist groups including Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State is the Muslim Brotherhood, also known as the Ikhwan and Society of Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by a school teacher, Hassan al-Banna. .

The Brotherhood is a totalitarian and Islamic supremacist movement that seeks world domination mainly through violent jihad or holy war as mandated by Allah through his prophet, Mohammed. One of Mohammed’s final “revelations” set out in the Quran is the “Verse of the Sword” which states in part: “When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.” (9:5)

The doctrine of a violent or offense jihad or holy war against all infidels of other religious faiths including Christians, Jews, Hindis, and Buddhists is the mainstream interpretation of Islamic scripture, not just the interpretation of terrorist Jihadists such as the newly created Islamic State.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Yusuf al-Qaradawi is one of the world’s most well-known and respected Sunni clerics and Islamic scholars based in Qatar who broadcasts a weekly program on al-Jazeera, “Shariah and Life” to an estimated audience of 60 million worldwide. Al Qaradawi is the spiritual leader of Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. He has sanctioned the use by the Palestine brothers of suicide bombings in Israel as divine justice and stated Shias are not Muslims and must be killed, according to videos posted on YouTube. He inspires the Islamic State’s genocide in Iraq of Shias, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and other religious minorities.

What motivates the Muslims of the Islamic State to embrace the violent jihadist ideology? A former terrorist named Tawik Hamid explains how he embraced the jihidist mindset of the violent Islamic Salafi sect: “I passed through three psychological stages to reach this level of comfort with death: hatred of non-Muslims or dissenting Muslims; suppression of my conscience; and acceptance of violence in the service of Allah. Salafi religious indoctrination played a major role in this process. Salafists promoted our hatred for non-Muslims …” quoted in the book authored by Erick Stakelbeck, “The Terrorist Next Door.”

The Islamic State’s violent jihadist ideology and indoctrination directly leads to the systematic killing or genocide of those who do not share their religious beliefs and ideology. Convert or be killed.

Parst 2 and 3 of this column will address how Obama and the U.S. government are responding to the terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State and their continuing genocide or mass murder in Iraq and Syria.

The Benghazi cover story

By Raymond Thomas Pronk

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak at transfer of remains ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base for Americans killed in Benghazi. Credit:www.vosizneias.com

The Benghazi cover story was an awful, offensive, crude and disgusting online video that insulted believers in Islam lead to a spontaneous protest that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

On Sept. 14, 2012 during the transfer of remains ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made remarks to the families of the four Americans killed in Benghazi. She briefly reviewed the careers and lives of the deceased: Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty and Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Clinton said, “We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

On Sept. 16, 2012, United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on all five Sunday morning TV news shows. The interviewers on all five shows asked Rice to provide the Obama administration’s explanation for the murder of the four Americans in Benghazi.

On ABC’s “This Week,” in response to a question by Jake Tapper, Rice answered, “But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.” Rice repeated this explanation on all five shows.

On Sept. 25, 2012, President Barack Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He also repeated Rice’s explanation for what happened in Benghazi. Obama said, “That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video.”

According to an Associated Press story by Paul Schemm and Michael Maggie: “Within 24 hours of the attack, both the embassy in Tripoli and the CIA station chief sent word to Washington that it was a planned militant attack,” and “there was no sign of a spontaneous protest against an American-made movie denigrating Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.”

The terrorist attackers numbering about 150 are suspected of being members of the powerful militia organization Ansar al-Shariah. Their members espouse a jihadist al-Qaida-like ideology. They fought in the Libyan civil war that overthrew the 42-year dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi.

Gregory Hicks was deputy chief of mission and charge d’affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya on Sept. 11. He was called to testify before the House Oversight Committee that is investigating Benghazi on May 9. Hicks said, “I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go. I think everybody at the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.”

On Oct. 27 CBS’s 60 Minutes Lara Logan said, “Contrary to the White House’s public statements, which were still being made a full week later, it’s now well established that the Americans were attacked by al-Qaida in a well-planned assault.”

Logan’s reporting coup was an interview with a new source, a British security officer, who uses a pseudonym. He said, “On his first drive through Benghazi, he noticed the black flags of al- Qaida flying openly in the streets and he grew concerned about the guard forces as soon as he pulled up to the U.S. compound.”

Also interviewed was Lt. Col. Andy Wood, chief security officer in Libya, and Hicks. Wood said, “Al-Qaida — using a familiar tactic — had stated their intent in an online posting, saying they would attack the Red Cross, the British and then the Americans in Benghazi. They made good on two out of the three promises. It was a matter of time ‘til they captured the third one.”

Wood added, “I made it known in a country team meeting, ‘You are gonna get attacked. You are gonna get attacked in Benghazi. It’s gonna happen. You need to change your security profile.’”

On Oct. 28 Fox News interviewed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He said, “So I am calling for a joint select committee. … The people who survived the attack in Benghazi, have not been made available to the U.S. Congress for oversight purposes. I’m going to block every appointment in the United States Senate until the survivors are being made available to the Congress.”

The truth was known from the beginning that the terrorist attacks were planned and well-organized by a militia group called Ansar al-Shariah and had absolutely nothing to do with a YouTube video. The Benghazi cover story was a lie repeatedly told to deceive the American people during an election year.

Raymond Thomas Pronk presents the Pronk Pops Show on KDUX web radio from 4-5 p.m. Monday thru Thursday and from 3-5 p.m. Friday and authors the companion blog http://www.pronkpops.wordpress.com.

A color-blind media and benign neglect of black violence?

By Raymond Thomas Pronk

What got my attention was three teenagers allegedly in broad daylight in a residential neighborhood shot in the back and killed a complete stranger who was out jogging because they were bored.

I was listening to a newscast on one of the talk radio stations in Dallas when I first learned of the killing of Australian collegiate baseball player Christopher Lane, 22, of Melbourne, Australia, by three teenagers in Duncan, in south central Oklahoma.

Later that day I was listening to a talk radio show when an Australian called in outraged that the American national media were not mentioning the race of the alleged teenage killers arrested. The two alleged killers were black and the alleged driver of the car was white. The caller said the homicide was a national news story in Australia where more details of what had happened were being broadcast than in the United States. The caller asked the question, if an Australian Aborigine had been shot by three white teenagers, would this not be a national story with the race of the killers disclosed?

Yes, it most certainly would have with the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson leading the parade of outrage in protest of the murder. The national media would be broadcasting every detail of the teenage white killers’ background as well as the innocent black victim.

Lane was attending East Central University in Ada, Okla., on an athletic scholarship. He was a starting catcher on the baseball team and was entering his senior year. Lane was visiting his girlfriend in Duncan, which is about 85 miles east of Ada.

Lane and his girlfriend of four years, Sarah Harper, had just returned from a vacation in Australia. Harper said in an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Company, “I’m really thankful I got to do that before this happened. Spent a lot of time with him and with his family in the place that he really loved being. Him being so proud to show everybody and everything off that he loved.”

The Duncan police have arrested and charged 15-year-old James Edwards Jr. and 16-year old Chancey Luna as adults with first-degree felony murder. The police also arrested and charged the driver of the car, 17-year old Michael Jones, with use of a vehicle in discharge of a weapon and accessory after the fact to murder in the first degree. Edwards and Luna are black and Jones is white, according to a police affidavit.

The police said it was Jones who told them, “We were bored and didn’t have anything to do so we decided to kill somebody.”

Harper said of the killers, “Never met them, never heard of them. And the fact that it was just they saw him running and chose him as a target is just unbearable, that it was just pointless. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it and it’s just not fair.”

The murder in Duncan with a population under 25,000 may be a rare event. However, in black neighborhoods in large cities across the United States, black-on black-crime, including homicides, is a very common event. Blacks are the overwhelming majority of the victims of black gang and drug-related violence.

The black economist Walter Williams wrote, “between 1976 and 2005, blacks, while 13 percent of the population, committed over 52 percent of the nation’s homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer.”

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States 2011, there were 12,664 homicide victims in the U.S. of which 6,329 were black, 5,825 were white, 335 other race and 175 unknown race.

When it comes to black-on-black violent crime, especially homicides, the national media is apparently color-blind and treats such crime with benign neglect.

Fifty years ago on Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C., his now famous “I Have a Dream” speechwith its inspiring ending: “…when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

I hope the dream comes true. This will first require universal respect for all human life and the honesty to face and confront the causes of evil in both black and white neighborhoods — gangs and drugs glorified by gangsta rap music, games and movies. Corrupting culture, entertainment, alcohol and drug use can lead to violence and murder of the innocent.

Until then in the words of singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, sung by his friend and lover, the late Port Arthur born Texas singer-songwriter Janis Joplin, who died at age 27 of a drug overdose of heroin with alcohol in Hollywood:

“…Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,
Nothin’ don’t mean nothing if it ain’t free.
And feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,
You know, feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee. ”

Raymond Thomas Pronk presents the Pronk Pops Show on KDUX web radio from 4-5 p.m. Monday thru Thursday and from 3-5 p.m. Friday and authors the companion blog http://www.pronkpops.wordpress.com.